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The Big Hate

Back in April, there was a huge fuss over an internal report by the
Department of Homeland Security warning that current conditions
resemble those in the early 1990s — a time marked by an upsurge of
right-wing extremism that culminated in the Oklahoma City bombing.

Conservatives were outraged. The chairman of the Republican National
Committee denounced the report as an attempt to “segment out
conservatives in this country who have a different philosophy or view
from this administration” and label them as terrorists.

But with the murder of Dr. George Tiller by an anti-abortion
fanatic, closely followed by a shooting by a white supremacist at the
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the analysis looks prescient.

There is, however, one important thing that the D.H.S. report didn’t
say: Today, as in the early years of the Clinton administration but to
an even greater extent, right-wing extremism is being systematically
fed by the conservative media and political establishment.

Now, for the most part, the likes of Fox News and the R.N.C. haven’t
directly incited violence, despite Bill O’Reilly’s declarations that
“some” called Dr. Tiller “Tiller the Baby Killer,” that he had “blood
on his hands,” and that he was a “guy operating a death mill.” But they
have gone out of their way to provide a platform for conspiracy
theories and apocalyptic rhetoric, just as they did the last time a
Democrat held the White House.

And at this point, whatever dividing line there was between
mainstream conservatism and the black-helicopter crowd seems to have
been virtually erased.

Exhibit A for the mainstreaming of right-wing extremism is Fox
News’s new star, Glenn Beck. Here we have a network where, like it or
not, millions of Americans get their news — and it gives daily airtime
to a commentator who, among other things, warned viewers that the
Federal Emergency Management Agency might be building concentration
camps as part of the Obama administration’s “totalitarian” agenda
(although he eventually conceded that nothing of the kind was
happening).

But let’s not neglect the print news media. In the Bush years, The
Washington Times became an important media player because it was widely
regarded as the Bush administration’s house organ. Earlier this week,
the newspaper saw fit to run an opinion piece declaring that President
Obama “not only identifies with Muslims, but actually may still be one
himself,” and that in any case he has “aligned himself” with the
radical Muslim Brotherhood.

And then there’s Rush Limbaugh. His rants today aren’t very
different from his rants in 1993. But he occupies a different position
in the scheme of things. Remember, during the Bush years Mr. Limbaugh
became very much a political insider. Indeed, according to a recent
Gallup survey, 10 percent of Republicans now consider him the “main
person who speaks for the Republican Party today,” putting him in a
three-way tie with Dick Cheney and Newt Gingrich. So when Mr. Limbaugh
peddles conspiracy theories — suggesting, for example, that fears over
swine flu were being hyped “to get people to respond to government
orders” — that’s a case of the conservative media establishment joining
hands with the lunatic fringe.

It’s not surprising, then, that politicians are doing the same
thing. The R.N.C. says that “the Democratic Party is dedicated to
restructuring American society along socialist ideals.” And when Jon
Voight, the actor, told the audience at a Republican fund-raiser this
week that the president is a “false prophet” and that “we and we alone
are the right frame of mind to free this nation from this Obama
oppression,” Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, thanked him,
saying that he “really enjoyed” the remarks.

Credit where credit is due. Some figures in the conservative media
have refused to go along with the big hate — people like Fox’s Shepard
Smith and Catherine Herridge, who debunked the attacks on that Homeland
Security report two months ago. But this doesn’t change the broad
picture, which is that supposedly respectable news organizations and
political figures are giving aid and comfort to dangerous extremism.

What will the consequences be? Nobody knows, of course, although the
analysts at Homeland Security fretted that things may turn out even
worse than in the 1990s — that thanks, in part, to the election of an
African-American president, “the threat posed by lone wolves and small
terrorist cells is more pronounced than in past years.”

And that’s a threat to take seriously. Yes, the worst terrorist
attack in our history was perpetrated by a foreign conspiracy. But the
second worst, the Oklahoma City bombing, was perpetrated by an
all-American lunatic. Politicians and media organizations wind up such
people at their, and our, peril.

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